


AA 'Verse 2K18

by viennasunrise (kteaanne)



Category: Avengers Assemble (Cartoon)
Genre: AA, Angst, Avengers Assemble - Freeform, Fluff, M/M, inspired by the gayest cartoon in the history of the disney channel, omg i missed this verse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-09
Updated: 2018-01-09
Packaged: 2019-03-02 16:16:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13321869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kteaanne/pseuds/viennasunrise
Summary: 52 episodic stories of Steve and Tony's dysfunctional relationship, how they got back together, and how now they parent their children (aka the other Avengers because God knows Clint can't be responsible for himself.)





	AA 'Verse 2K18

**Author's Note:**

> This work has not been beta'd. If anyone would like to volunteer as tribute please let me know!!!!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Avengers Assemble 1:1 _The Avengers Protocol: Part One_

He tried not to feel guilty as he sat down at his desk for the fourth time that week. If he was being honest with himself this stopped being “honest curiosity” weeks ago when he asked JARVIS to start keeping constant tabs on the team but he was rarely that honest with himself. He only slept for three hours last night but he had to keep the energy up or the walls would start to close in. He warmed his hands with his mug of coffee and got to work. 

“Man it’s been a while since I’ve seen any action! I wonder if any of the old gang needs their butts saved today,” he said to no one in particular. JARVIS was always listening but he, annoyingly, chose to stay silent just to be an ass. 

He scanned ( _spied_ , JARVIS reminded him) through the team one by one. He tried to tell himself it’s just to make sure they can handle whatever mission they’re on, on their own but he knew (and so did JARVIS) that it’s a little white lie he told himself to make the truth more bearable; not that he couldn’t handle the current _arrangement_. He just liked having as much information as possible. Or at least that was how he justified the spying.

Thor, Hulk, Hawkeye… none of them needed his help. This routine was just an exercise in reminding him of why he never meshed well in the group; none of them batted an eye when the team split up all those months ago. None of the rest of them lost any sleep; although Tony was willing to concede that some of the sleep he lost had more to do with Steve than the team but that was an entirely different issue. Which was, of course, when JARVIS pulled up Steve’s surveillance feed. 

“You could just contact them, sir,” JARVIS chimed in just as Tony’s mind started drifting to red, white, and blue spandex.

“No. We broke up the band for a reason. And like I predicted, Earth is doing just fine without the Avengers. It’s just that…” _Nope._ _Not going there. Not ever going there again._

JARVIS’s alarm started to sound as the probability indicators that Steve could survive his current mission solo started dropping. Tony’s anxiety spiked higher than he’d felt it for months as he scrambled to figure out why a bunch of Hydra losers were causing Steve so much trouble. And then he saw him. 

On reflex, Tony suited up and took off after Cap. Steve didn’t seem to be in too much trouble when he first spotted him in the park. He’d managed to fend off the Hydra goons with just the shield but the Red Skull wouldn’t be so easily subdued. 

“New toys, same old Hydra. Sorry you came all the way back from the dead to chalk up another loss, Skull.” 

Even though the suit had a bad habit of distorting sound, Tony felt his stomach squirm a little when he heard that voice. He hadn’t been this close to Steve in almost a year and he found himself fighting the urge to run even though he knew his friend needed him. 

“Just a few more seconds, Cap.” The words were out of his mouth before he could stop them but it didn’t matter. He was too far out and the Skull was too quick on the draw. Before Tony could lift a finger to defend Steve, he was gone. All that was left was the shield and a scorch mark on the concrete where he’d been standing a second before. 

Tony’s heart dropped out of his chest and his body took over, acting on instinct. The rest of the fight was a blur. By the end of it, all he knew was that Modok and the Skull were working together, the Skull had Steve’s shield, and Steve was dead. 

He expected to wallow in self-pity. He expected to lock himself in the lab for weeks and not talk to anyone. He expected to pick up drinking again. What he did not expect was the white-hot rage he felt and even more shocking was that it wasn’t directed at the Skull. He was mad at Steve. 

Maybe it was a delayed response to everything that happened when the team broke up, maybe he was just mad that Steve was stupid enough to take on Hydra solo when SHIELD would have backed his play from the beginning. Maybe he was really just angry with himself but he wanted to blame Steve… Whatever the reason, Tony never expected it to provoke him to assemble the Avengers again. 

Before he truly had the opportunity to gauge the repercussions of assembling the team, they were in the quinjet tracking tachyon particles in Antarctica to try and track down MODOK and the Red Skull. As angry as he was, Tony found himself revelling in the team working together again. He knew it was a one time deal, as soon as they avenged Steve they would go their separate ways, but he was willing to deal with the disappointment later. For now, things were OK and he felt like he could breathe again. 

Except no one was in sync. From the second MODOK blew up the quinjet things started falling apart.

“What is our plan to vanquish the skull,” Thor demanded the second the team hit the ground. 

“Hit everything. Hard,” Tony said. They all expected Tony to take charge, to come up with a plan, but he hadn’t thought much past needing to avenge Steve. Steve had always been the one with the plans… He had always been their leader. Tony wasn’t cut out for this. 

He took off hard from the ground and immediately got into a firefight with a group of Hydra soldiers. Things seemed to work for a few minutes, Thor successfully managed to take out most of the turrets surrounding the underground bunker and Hawkeye disarmed several of the Hydra men. But then things started to take a turn for the worse.  All anyone did was argue; it seemed like every advantage they had had a year ago was going to work against them. MODOK joined the fray and started causing real trouble. At one point Tony lost control of the suit, MODOK’s technopath abilities were a fuck-ton more of a problem than he had anticipated. 

Almost as if on cue, Natasha showed up and managed to distract MODOK with a flash grenade long enough for Tony to get free. Before he had the chance to do anything though, the Skull called MODOK back to the bunker and he was gone.

“Is it true,” Natasha asked, “about Cap?”

Tony hesitated. “Yes” was all he could manage to actually say. Admitting Steve was dead out loud would finalize it; it was like a door that would shut that Tony couldn’t open again and he wasn’t ready. He needed more time. 

“Then you’d better stop playing solo and actually lead this team before you lose more friends today.” 

Goddamnit. He forgot how annoyingly well she knew him. He always hated it when she was right.

“Alright, as a team. MODOK’s cloaked. I can’t find a hair on his big ugly head. Ideas?”

“Scan for the Skull. He’s a super-soldier alumni. His blood has trace isotopes that will show up on a chemical scan,” Natasha supplied. Why was it that she always had to do things the hard way. She could have just fucking suggested that from the start and they wouldn’t still be sitting out in the snow like a bunch of assholes with no plan. 

“Accessing the super-soldier files, scanning for a chemical match,” Tony said exasperatedly. Why hadn’t he thought of that? He was supposed to be the smart one. “There’re two targets…?”

Without conscious thought, he took off in the direction the HUD indicated. If there were two targets… he didn’t want to let himself hope. His anxiety spiked as he pushed the suit faster. 

“Automated defences have us pinned down,” Clint’s voice came out loud through the speakers in the helmet. “We need some tech help, now.”

God-fucking-dammit. Frustration rose up in him unexpectedly. He was supposed to be sticking with the team. He was supposed to be their leader and now he was fucking it all up again on the off chance that Steve was alive. If Steve was alive… that would change everything. 

“Rub your brain cells together and come up with a plan,” as soon as the words were out of his mouth he knew he regretted them. The team didn’t deserve that; didn’t deserve him as a leader. “I’m too close.”

He blew through the final door and watched it sail across the room and maul MODOK. His eyes frantically searched the room and then he saw Steve. He disabled whatever the stupid tech was that Steve was hooked up to and ripped the bindings off him. 

“Let’s get you out of here,” he said, scanning Steve’s face to make sure he was OK.

“Iron Man,” a voice that was not Steve’s said, “so you left the rest of your team behind, for me?”

Tony’s anxiety spiked again. What in the ever living fuck was going on? “It sounds bad when you put it like that but,” Tony said apprehensively, “how did you know there were here?”

And then Steve hit him and everything clicked. The Skull’s monologue about his dying body wasn’t necessary. Tony immediately realized his calculations had been off; Steve was never dead, just teleported. And now the Skull had managed to take over his body.  This day literally could not get any more ridiculous. 

It was at that moment that Steve, trapped in the Skull’s body, grabbed the shield and slammed his fist into the Skull, throwing him across the room. The Skull wasted no time retaliating and Steve, now dying, was knocked to the ground. 

“You’ve avenged me, Tony,” Steve coughed lying in Tony’s arms. “Now lead them.”

Tony wasn’t about to lose Steve again. He had to come up with a plan and fast. He was there alone with nothing but the suit and MODOK would make sure he wasn’t able to do any damage. And then it hit him.

“JARVIS, has Sam left the tower?”

“Yes, he’s on his way but--”

“Perfect,” Tony said. Before he could give it a second thought he set of an EMP, neutralizing MODOK but in the process completely disabling the suit. 

From there everything went exactly as Tony wanted; Sam showed up and knocked the Skull out, the rest of the team got through the Hydra defences, and they finally figured out how to work as a team. Tony wasn’t sure if he had learned something about not needing to do everything alone or if, somehow, Steve’s presence was the glue they needed, but it was just like old times. Everyone hit their mark exactly like they needed and before Tony knew what hit him, Steve was back in his own body. 

There were a lot of things he felt like he needed to say, none of which he could say in front of the team. _I love you_ would be a good start but seeing that the rest of the team never knew they were together this probably wasn’t the moment to spill the beans. He handed Steve back the shield and grasped him on the shoulder. It seemed like the kind of thing that would be OK in front of the team… and maybe the only thing that was OK after all this time. 

He worked up the courage to look Steve in the eye and smiled with a lot of effort, “No one messes with one of our own and gets away with it.”

Steve looked back at him, his ice blue eyes still cut through Tony the way they always had. He smiled back, “Avenger’s forever.”

Tony wanted to read a lot into that, but it _a)_ wasn’t the time and _b)_ he would probably over analyze it anyway. Steve had made it very clear why they needed to split up in the first place. Why would he think things were any different now. This was literally the first time in a year the two of them had been in the same room. It wasn’t like--see. Over analyzing why he shouldn’t think about it. This is exactly the wrong time for all this shit. It was definitely time to go back to the mansion and hide somewhere with a bottle of vodka. 

“All these years,” the Skull wheezed from his broken body, “all these battles, and I’ve been going about it wrong. Thank you, Stark, for showing me what I must become. MODOK!”

Within seconds Tony was surrounded by an inescapable force field and the suit started to fail. MODOK was stealing the suit and thanks to his technopath abilities there was nothing Tony or any of the rest of them could do to stop it. Tony hung helplessly twenty feet in the air as piece by piece the suit was ripped off his body. 

“If I cannot have his body to keep me alive,” the Skull taunted from somewhere to his left, “I will take yours.”

And then, as if the universe had decided to pile all the shittiest things that could happen to him up into one day, MODOK took the arc reactor. The pain was excruciating. It felt like his life had literally been ripped from his body and he instantly felt his heart weaken and his breathing became labored. His entire focus narrowed to the throbbing pain in his chest. Nothing existed but agony. It felt like years that he hung there, almost lifeless, in the air. His mind unable to focus on anything but the pain. He was vaguely aware that he existed beyond it but the rest of his body felt so distant it didn’t matter. It was like he could feel each individual piece of shrapnel inch closer to his heart. Everything went cold and then before he could give in to the dark, he slammed hard into the cold concrete floor of the lab. 

He looked up and, for a second, was convinced he had actually died. Steve was there, his warm arms cradling him to his chest. Tony tried to lift his hand to Steve, who noticed and grasped it tightly in his own. He squeezed once and Tony tried to reciprocate but he was too weak. 

“Hey Steve, remember how far I went to pull your butt out of the fire. Your turn.” And with that, Tony gave into the darkness. 


End file.
